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Thursday, November 11, 2010

Ian Duncan Smith's Welfare Reforms: Three Big Flaws

It is totally and utterly pointless to train, motivate and force claimants to seek work, and to facilitate their passage into said employment if there is no bleeding work out there for them to take up.

Today the details are emerging, and the Devil's tail can be seen poking out behind more and more detail.

The most salient feature is the "stick" - withdrawal of benefit if the claimant does not take up job applications, community work or any job offered. Benefits will be withdrawn for

3months on first refusal

6months on second refusal

3years on 3rd refusal

The first problem is that this stick will be in force before the "carrot" - the tapering of loss of benefit - is in place. This means that for two or three years, people will find they have no choice but to work for less money than they are currently getting. IDS has put the cart of compulsion before the horse of rationalisation. This is likely to make people frustrated and angry, which could in turn lead to replication of the scenes we saw at Millbank yesterday.

The second problem is that the unpaid community work is indistinguishable (apart from the orange jackets) from Community Payback carried out by offenders. Notionally then, unemployment is identified in the Tory mind with criminality. This is not right. There should be some kind of distinction, with the unemployed being given some kind of remuneration for their community work.

A third problem is that street cleaners, for instance, could find themselves made redundant, and then compelled to do their old work for nothing. Intolerable.

I am not doing the knee jerk opposition to IDS' reforms. In my opinion,

Long term unemployment IS a problem.

People are missing out by being unable to work, because work generally improves health.

Do you know that if there is a job notified to Jobcentreplus say in Wimbledon, then advisers will sub that job to claimants (and you cannot refuse to apply for it without risking a sanction for failing to avail yourself of a 'job opportunity')up to a limit usually of 290 subs. I have seen on printouts where these limits have been reached and the job withdrawn.So Jobcentreplus alone is forcing 290 applications for that job--routinely.

The Nazi lie should not be taken as the final solution to the question of work. Defined as a way of increasing order in our environment, work becomes a very interesting concept, not least because it rules out explosives and fossil fuels.http://www.greenhealth.org.uk/PhilosWork.htm